Hi there! Would it be possible to kinda tag the search results on the map?

When I do a Factory Search, it lists all the places e.g. an entity is placed, which is awesome, but when I click through the results, I have to keep the GUI open or else the results disappear. And when I click on a result, it zooms to the location, and then I have to find my orientation again at what part of the factory I'm actually looking right now.

I'd love to additionally have an overview, such that I could see e.g. "ah, around here, here and here are the main areas where this entity is placed (ingredient is used, item is in storage, ...)". If the search results would be tagged on the map, I could zoom out and have an overview where the search results are, without clicking through them and putting the pieces together in my mind to get an overall view.

I believe this is how BeastFinder did it back in the day, but I might be wrong since I haven't used it for a long time (it's stuck in 1.1 anyway).

I imagine it's a hassle to create such tags (or pins or something, not sure of my wording here), keep track of them, delete them when e.g. closing the GUI or clicking a button "delete search results" or something, but it should be possible I think and at least for me, it would be a great addition to this already amazing mod.

What do you think?

I second the issue and idea but not the proposed solution. If you use tagging for anything else the suggested Factory Search tags would be lost from the map view. Look at the screenshot below and imagine a few newly added tags, you simply won't be able to spot them.

But I agree that the mod's missing a feature where you could zoom out and see all searched results on the map view. Would be great to have FS' green box there or something like it:

Agreed, but sadly it is map tags or nothing, since arbitrary drawing on the map isn’t supported: https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=76539

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=76539

lol

Yeah I totally get this, depends on the play style of course. I, too, liked to tag where stuff is produced, but I found that the 2.0 search works well enought for me such that I use tags less often. I mean the 2.0 search behaves pretty much exactly as I would love this mod to behave, but of course it only searches for products and mining patches and some other arbitrary stuff, not for all the great search options this mod offers.

I think there could be some options this mod could provide to accomodate different playstyles, maybe you could choose whether to set tags or pins (pins have a huge icon on the map regardless of zoom level), or prefix the temporary tags such that they stick out ("XXX-XXX-XXX-search-result"). Or wasn't there some mod in the past that scaled the placed tag icons to a huge size, that could show the difference, too?

Come to think of that, the vanilla 2.0 search DOES paint filled rectangles on the map - is that a Factorio internal thing that only core can use, or is that maybe accessible via mods? (btw, what are the little green squares in your screenshot...?)

Plus, I've just noticed that tags are searched via vanilla 2.0 search, too, and when selected in the search, the specific tag is highlighted. Again, could be core only, but maybe there's a way to highlight a certain set of tags, i.e. those temporarily placed by this mod?

btw, what are the little green squares in your screenshot...?

It was a photoshoped mockup representation of my suggested implementation of the feature in question. Alas it's not possible to make it that way with what the current modding API allows.

Excellent news: drawing on map is coming in 2.0.56!

So now to decide exactly how to use it… I think best would be to draw a green square around the entire area for each search result, and maybe also filling in the square with a mostly-transparent overlay.

So rather than drawing a box around every single machine (which it does in regular view) there’d just be a box/square over the area covered by that group.

Could also have the result blink on/off… would that be too annoying?

Could also have the result blink on/off… would that be too annoying?

Ig that depends if this will be sufficient enough:

I think best would be to draw a green square around the entire area for each search result

Could always add blinking as a setting tho. Or maybe a square changing color every second, like green-yellow-red.

A preliminary version of this is now released in 1.14.0. It currently only draws-on-map the result that you just clicked on, and it will only function if you are on 2.0.56+ (currently experimental). When 2.0.56 becomes stable I will rework the feature to draw all results on the map, as discussed above, but this will take a bit more time.